ces--except Cynthia. But Miss Sadler did not
take her hand on the opening day--or afterward--and ask her about Uncle
Jethro. Oh, no. Miss Sadler had no interest for great men who did not
sail for Europe or add picture galleries on to their houses. Cynthia
laughed, a little bitterly, perhaps, at the thought of a picture gallery
being added to the tannery house. And she told herself stoutly that Uncle
Jethro was a greater man than any of the others, even if Miss Sadler did
not see fit to mention him. So she had her first taste of a kind of
wormwood that is very common in the world though it did not grow in
Coniston.

For a while after Cynthia's introduction to the school she was calmly
ignored by many of the young ladies there, and once openly--snubbed, to
use the word in its most disagreeable sense. Not that she gave any of
them any real cause to snub her. She did not intrude her own affairs upon
them, but she was used to conversing kindly with the people about her as
equals, and for this offence; on the third day, Miss Sally Broke snubbed
her. It is hard not to make a heroine of Cynthia, not to be able to
relate that she instantly put Miss Sally's nose out of joint. Susan
Merrill tried to do that, and failed signally, for Miss Sally's nose was
not easily dislodged. Susan fought more than one of Cynthia's battles. As
a matter of fact, Cynthia did not know that she had been affronted until
that evening. She did not tell her friends how she spent the night
yearning fiercely for Coniston and Uncle Jethro, at times weeping for
them, if the truth be told; how she had risen before the dawn to write a
letter, and to lay some things in the rawhide trunk. The letter was never
sent, and the packing never finished. Uncle Jethro wished her to stay and
to learn to be a lady, and stay she would, in spite of Miss Broke and the
rest of them. She went to school the next day, and for many days and
weeks thereafter, and held communion with the few alone who chose to
treat her pleasantly. Unquestionably this is making a heroine of Cynthia.

If young men are cruel in their schools, what shall be written of young
women? It would be better to say that both are thoughtless. Miss Sally
Broke, strange as it may seem, had a heart, and many of the other young
ladies whose fathers sailed for Europe and owned picture galleries; but
these young ladies were absorbed, especially after vacation, in affairs
of which a girl from Coniston had no part. Their